Dynamic Tape is a different tool for a different job. It is made from very different materials, has completely different physical properties and is used very differently to rigid athletic tapes or the colourful kinesiology tapes that are often seen.
Dynamic Tape is a highly elastic tape which stretches in all directions and has very strong recoil properties. It can be laminated together to increase this power. It stretches much further and does not have a rigid end point like kinesiology tapes.
This design and the unique, visco-elastic properties allow it to work like a bungee cord by acting on the levers of the body to provide a deceleration force, absorbing load and reducing the work on injured tissues. Once deceleration is complete, the energy is stored as elastic potential energy and then reinjected back into the system to assist movement as shortening commences.
In this way it can do the work of weak, injured or overloaded muscles or can be used to change movement patterns by pulling the body in one direction or resisting it in another. This can be useful for improving technique in sport, assisting gait in a child with cerebral palsy or assisting the grasp of someone who has suffered a stroke.
In simple terms it provides strong mechanical assistance to reduce the work on injured tissues, assist weak muscles or improve movement patterns while still allowing full range of motion even when performing complex, multi-planar movements like those required in sport or work.
This is very different to the primary neurophysiological approach described by kinesiology tapes where they aim to lift the skin to create space in order to take pressure off pain sensitive structures, to increase the circulation or to effect muscle activity via the input into the nervous system through the skin.
Powerful neurophysiological and circulatory effects are seen with Dynamic Tape and this is a nice bonus however our clinical reasoning is based on a sound evaluation of the anatomy and biomechanics to determine which tissues are overloaded and the movement faults that are contributing to this. Dynamic Taping is then applied to address this. Tissues do not fail because of pain, they fail because of load. Dynamic Taping aims to absorb load extrinsically thereby reducing the load that the body has to dissipate intrinsically.
Furthermore, in many cases pain is not even present and if it is, it does not correlate well with the amount of tissue damage. Dynamic Taping may be used to assist someone with a foot drop post stroke or to correct someones golf swing. A focus on movement and load allows us to get effective results.